WHENEVER A TERRORIST ATTACK OCCURS, it never takes long for politicians to begin calling for more surveillance powers. The horrendous attacks in Paris last week, which left more than 120 people dead, are no exception to this rule. In recent days, officials in the United Kingdom and the United States have been among those arguing that more surveillance of Internet communications is necessary to prevent further atrocities.

The case for expanded surveillance of communications, however, is complicated by an analysis of recent terrorist attacks. The Intercept has reviewed 10 high-profile jihadi attacks carried out in Western countries between 2013 and 2015 (see below), and in each case some or all of the perpetrators were already known to the authorities before they executed their plot. In other words, most of the terrorists involved were not ghost operatives who sprang from nowhere to commit their crimes; they were already viewed as a potential threat, yet were not subjected to sufficient scrutiny by authorities under existing counterterrorism powers. Some of those involved in last week’s Paris massacre, for instance, were already known to authorities; at least three of the men appear to have been flagged at different times as having been radicalized, but warning signs were ignored.

In the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity, government officials often seem to talk about surveillance as if it were some sort of panacea, a silver bullet. But what they always fail to explain is how, even with mass surveillance systems already in place in countries like France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, attacks still happen. In reality, it is only possible to watch some of the people some of the time, not all of the people all of the time. Even if you had every single person in the world under constant electronic surveillance, you would still need a human being to analyze the data and assess any threats in a timely fashion. And human resources are limited and fallible.

There is no doubt that we live in a dangerous world and that intelligence agencies and the police have a difficult job to do, particularly in the current geopolitical environment. They know about hundreds or thousands of individuals who sympathize with terrorist groups, any one of whom may be plotting an attack, yet they do not appear to have the means to monitor each of these people closely over sustained periods of time. If any lesson can be learned from studying the perpetrators of recent attacks, it is that there needs to be a greater investment in conducting targeted surveillance of known terror suspects and a move away from the constant knee-jerk expansion of dragnet surveillance, which has simply not proven itself to be effective, regardless of the debate about whether it is legal or ethical in the first place.

Map of 10 recent attacks carried out in Western countries by Islamic extremists.

Known to authorities? At least three of the men involved in planning and carrying out the French attacks were known to European authorities and at least four were listed in a U.S. terrorism watchlist database. Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, who helped carry out the massacre at the Bataclan concert venue, had been flagged as a radicalization risk in 2010. French police reportedly ignored two warnings about Mostefaï before he carried out the attacks. Some of his friends claimed to have tried to alert French police about his radical views, but said they were told the authorities could do nothing. Samy Amimour, another of the men involved in the Bataclan massacre, had been previously charged with terrorist offenses “after an abortive attempt to travel to Yemen,” according to Paris prosecutors.

The alleged ringleader of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also well-known to European police. In 2013, he booked a flight from Cologne to Turkey, which was flagged to German authorities because he was reportedly on an EU watchlist. But he was not detained and was able to board the flight. From Turkey, Abaaoud entered Syria, where he joined ISIS. Abaaoud later returned to Europe and was named as a wanted extremist in January following a gun battle in Belgium. In February, he featured prominently in ISIS propaganda magazine Dabiq boasting about how he had been able to evade police detection in Europe.

Others involved in the Paris attacks are also likely to have been on the radar of police and intelligence agencies due to their travels to Syria. Bilal Hadfi, for instance, was living in Belgium after having returned from Syria, where he is believed to have fought with Islamic State militants. Hadfi apparently attended the Instituut Anneessens-Funck college in Brussels; his former history professor recalled that, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, Hadfi defended the attacks. The professor reported him to management due to concerns about his radical views, but management “decided not to intervene, to avoid stigmatizing the young student.” In June, Hadfi reportedly posted on his Facebook page encouraging terrorist attacks: “Those dogs are attacking our civilians everywhere. Strike them in their community of pigs so they can’t feel safe again in their own dreams.” The family of Ibrahim Abdeslam, who detonated a suicide vest inside a cafe during the attacks, said he too had spent “a long time” in Syria before returning to Europe.

2. Thalys train attack, France: August 21, 2015

Known to authorities? Khazzani was reportedly known to European authorities for his Islamic radicalism. While living in Spain, he had come to security agencies’ attention after he was observed defending jihadis and attending a radical mosque in Algeciras, Spain.

French police stand guard on the platform next to a Thalys train at the station in Arras, northern France, on Aug. 22, 2015, the day after an armed gunman was overpowered by passengers.

Photo: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

3. Curtis Culwell Center attack, Garland, Texas: May 3, 2015

Known to authorities? Elton Simpson had reportedly been placed on the U.S. no-fly list and had been convicted of a terror-related offense in 2011 after being caught discussing traveling to Somalia to engage in violent jihad. Soofi, on the other hand, was reportedly “relatively unknown to federal investigators,” though he lived with Simpson. A third man, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, was allegedly responsible for supplying the guns and ammunition used in the attack. Kareem was investigated in 2012 after he was suspected of developing a plot to attack a Super Bowl game in Arizona with explosives.

An FBI evidence response team member investigates the crime scene after a shooting outside of the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, May 4, 2015 .

Photo: Ben Torres/Getty Images

4. Shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark: February 14-15, 2015

Known to authorities? Hussein was reportedly well-known to Danish security agencies. Prior to the Copenhagen shootings, he had been imprisoned for stabbing a teenager in the leg on a train. While he was in jail, prison officials filed a concern report to the Danish intelligence agency PET, warning that his behavior had changed and that he had become extremely religious. Two weeks after he was released from jail he went on the shooting rampage that left three dead and five wounded in different parts of Copenhagen. Shortly before the attacks, Hussein had apparently sworn allegiance to ISIS in a post on his Facebook page.

The body of a shooting suspect lies on the pavement as Danish forensic police officers examine the scene, Feb. 15, 2015, Copenhagen Denmark.

Known to authorities? Chérif Kouachi was well-known to French security agencies as an Islamic extremist. In 2005 he was detained trying to board a plane for Syria and in 2008 he was jailed for three years for his role in sending militants to Iraq. Both Chérif and his brother Saïd were alleged to have been involved in a 2010 plot to free from prison Smaïn Ait Ali Belkacem, the French-Algerian extremist responsible for the 1995 Paris metro station bombing. The brothers were never prosecuted over the prison-break plot due to a lack of evidence. In 2011, Saïd traveled to Yemen and allegedly trained with al Qaeda. The U.S. reportedly provided France with intelligence in 2011 showing the brothers received terrorist training in Yemen and French authorities monitored them until the spring of 2014. Amedy Coulibaly was also well-known to the authorities. In 2013 he was sentenced to five years in prison for providing ammunition as part of the 2010 prison-break plot that the Kouachi brothers were also suspected of involvement in. However, Coulibaly reportedly only spent about three months in jail and was released in March 2014.

6. Cafe seige, Sydney, Australia: December 15-16, 2014

Known to authorities? Two months prior to taking 17 people hostage in a Sydney cafe, Monis wrote a letter to Australia’s attorney general seeking advice about the legality of communicating with ISIS. He was “well-known” to federal and state police, as well as the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and had sent “hate letters” to families of Australian soldiers killed in overseas conflicts. Before carrying out his attacks, Monis apparently pledged allegiance on his website to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This was reported to Australian authorities, who reviewed Monis’ website and social media posts but (erroneously) concluded he was unlikely to carry out an act of violence.

A hostage runs toward tactical response police officers after escaping from a cafe under siege in the central business district of Sydney, Australia, Dec. 15, 2014.

Known to authorities? Couture-Rouleau was known to Canadian authorities prior to an attack in which he rammed two Canadian soldiers, killing one and injuring another. He had reportedly been “considered some kind of threat by the Canadian government” and had posted a variety of pro-jihadi materials on his Facebook page. Police had been monitoring him over concerns that he had become radicalized and his passport had been seized to prevent him from traveling abroad to join militants. Zehaf-Bibeau, who shot dead a soldier at a war memorial near the Canadian parliament, was a habitual offender who had a criminal record for a number of offenses, including robbery and drug possession. Zehaf-Bibeau was reportedly “on the radar” of federal authorities in Canada and his email address had been previously found on the computer hard drive of someone charged with a “terrorist-related offense.”

Police, bystanders and soldiers aid a fallen soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada, the site of an apparent terrorist attack, Oct. 22, 2014.

Photo: Cuddington/Barcroft Media /Landov

8. Jewish Museum killings in Brussels: May 24, 2014

Known to authorities? Nemmouche had been incarcerated on five occasions in France for various crimes, including armed robbery. In 2013 he had traveled to Syria. When he returned to Europe he was reportedly placed under surveillance by French counterterrorism police, who suspected he had joined with Islamic extremist fighters while in Syria.

A forensic expert enters the Jewish Museum in Brussels, May 24, 2014.

Photo: Yves Logghe/AP

9. Beheading in Woolwich, London: May 22, 2013

Known to authorities? Both attackers were known to British authorities and were suspected of having been radicalized prior to their murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London. According to a U.K. parliamentary report published following the attack, Adebolajo was investigated under five separate police and security service operations. He was believed to have links to several extremist networks and was suspected of having tried to travel overseas to join a terrorist organization. Adebowale was investigated by British spies after he was identified as having viewed extremist material online. London counterterrorism police also received an uncorroborated tip that Adebowale was affiliated with al Qaeda. Investigators reviewed Adebowale’s cellphone records and apparently did not find anything of interest. But they did not check his landline call records, which if they had would have revealed that he had been in contact with an individual in Yemen linked to al Qaeda. Covert surveillance of both Adebolajo and Adebowale had ceased prior to their attack in London in May 2013, though Adebowale was still the subject of a terrorism-related investigation at the time.

A British police officer carries an evidence bag containing a knife near the scene where a soldier was murdered in Woolwich, Britain, May 23, 2013.

Known to authorities? Dzhokhar’s older brother, Tamerlan, who orchestrated the attacks, was placed on two different U.S. government watchlists in late 2011. Russian security agency FSB tipped off the FBI and CIA in 2011 that Tamerlan “was a follower of radical Islam,” and he and his family were subsequently interviewed by American agents, according to the Associated Press. The CIA reportedly “cleared [Tamerlan] of any ties to violent extremism” two years before he and his younger brother carried out the bombing of the marathon.

Boston Marathon participants run toward the finish line as an explosion erupts at the race, Boston, Mass., April 15, 2013.

Photo: Dan Lampariello/Reuters /Landov

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I am sorry to see that author of this article call for targeted surveillance, instead to call for stop of colonial wars that produce terrorism from both sides. France and Britain killed and exploited millions of Africans, and today they mix fingers in politics there, produce conflicts and corrupt, in order to rule. When colonists face with resistance to their colonial politics, and resistance is brutal the same as colonial politics, you call it terrorism and you misuse it to justify surveillance. War for oil, gas, gold (Mali), or maybe killing amazon villagers to make money from the wood there, I don’t care, it is all just about profit for riches. And then somebody speaks about targeted surveillance.

Common thing for attackers in France and Copenhagen: they were followed by the secret service, harassed, imprisoned, who knows what kind of dirty thing they did to them in the prison with help of criminals working for the secret service, and when they went out from the prison, they made suicide attacks, the attacker in Copenhagen could escape after first action, but he made second action 4-5 hours later, he didn’t try to stay alive. So, as long as secret service can hide from society what kind of “subversive actions” they make against subjects they follow/observe, there will be more and more attackers.
I remember and Muslim who cut the head of a soldier in Britain, he did it after British intelligence harassed him 5 years, his friend said so for media. Security is business, they produce radical people, to profit from attacks, to get more money from the budget, they don’t care for society.
So, colonial politics and harassment are the main reason individuals decide to make attacks. For me, it is valid resistance to colonialism, although it is brutal, but colonial politics is not loss brutal.

Ryan. Sad that you and The Intercept support the obvious railroading of the younger Tsarnaev, whose case was a travesty. I expected more. Certainly at least by mentioning the slimey involvement of CIA-contractor Graham E. Fuller and his venal son-in-law, “Uncle Ruslan.” But CNN gave the issue a pass, so why shouldn’t you? Even Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan stated that the FBI’s evidence proved the younger Tsarnaev to be innocent. I really expected more. What a fluff piece. Is The Intercept infiltrated already? Well, The New York times has been for quite a long time now, so why not you guys? Good job.

I suspect The Intercept was infiltrated right from its inception. There is no way in hell we are going to see these guys dig into the mass of evidence underlying each and every one of the examples of “terrorism” enumerated in this article, evidence which indicates quite clearly that the “attacks” were all engineered/staged by the transnational deep state.

Instead, we can expect them to continue to reinforce and perpetuate key elements of the deep state’s Big Lies as they pose as CRITICS of certain components of this deep state (the US government, the CIA, or the NSA, for example), without any suggestion of the subordinate role they play in a larger, transnational command structure.

Any individual will remain clueless about what is transpiring in the world around them as long as they accept the underLYING premise that these “attacks” are being perpetrated by Radical Muslim Terrorist groups operating independently of components of the transnational deep state – i.e., the CIA and affiliated intelligence agencies, and their corresponding governments and military command structures, along with both mainstream corporate media and the “alternative, independent” media across the political spectrum (full spectrum deception).

Beyond this crucial facet of the current situation which will never be addressed or even hinted at on this site (except, of course, in the comments), this statement by Gallagher betrays a rather pathetic ignorance of the topic he chooses to pontificate on: “…it is only possible to watch some of the people some of the time, not all of the people all of the time. Even if you had every single person in the world under constant electronic surveillance, you would still need a human being to analyze the data and assess any threats in a timely fashion. And human resources are limited and fallible.”

The fact is, the NSA and other organs of the deep state have been developing a science known as “computational linguistics”, more commonly known as automatic speech recognition technology, for nearly seven decades. As of the mid 1990s’ this technology had progressed to a degree that allowed it to be integrated into a fully automated surveillance program. In other words, Mr Gallagher, the NSA and affiliated deep state agencies possess the means for them to eavesdrop on all manner of human communication, to record, transcribe, “read, synthesize, summarize, and analyze the content of staggering volumes of data on a FULLY AUTOMATED BASIS. It isn’t just the “metadata”, stupid! It is the CONTENT as well.

Among other commonly known surveillance methods such as cell phone calls and e mail communication, the deep state has access to virtually every single human conversation that takes place in the world today. Does that sound like a wild and crazy assertion? How can that be? Well, for one thing, most people are obligingly carrying a mobile bug around with them every waking hour of the day. The fact is, cell phone mics are integrated into this system EVEN WHEN THE PHONE IS TURNED OFF. http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/

Very good, Ryan. Misrepresent the true, mind blowing extent of the existing surveillance programs (see above). Pose as a critic of these entities while dutifully serving as yet another purveyor of their Big Lies underlying your superficial analysis. And Never, ever, breathe a whisper of the ugly fact that they aren’t conducting these mass domestic spying programs in order to catch Radical Muslim Terrorists, for the simple fact that they CREATED and CONTROL them. And it goes without saying, never so much as HINT that each and every one of the “attacks” you list in your propaganda piece were orchestrated by the very same deep state that pretends to be in mortal combat with the bogeymen they have fabricated. GOOD BOY, Ryan.

The continuous failure by western governments to protect the public from such attacks demonstrates that either the governments involved are severely incompetent, complicit at some level, or both.

The idea that mass surveillance will somehow be able to replace quality police investigative processes stuns the minds of those who understand such fallacious claims.

As a senior software engineer, it is well known in my profession that an over abundance of information will lead to just as much poor decision making as too little data. Given the political hacks that administrate our governments as well as make policy, this axiom can only become exponentially worse.

Government institutions are bureaucratic labyrinths that just by their nature are inefficient in today’s world due to the ongoing claims by government leaders that they need “more” in every case instead of “better”. Given this, with each terrorist attack that is not thwarted as the major ones noted in the article, government representatives are quick to claim that if they had “more” surveillance capabilities the latest attack in question could have been stopped.

Of course it couldn’t have been stopped because the governments already have more than enough information and they weren’t able to do their jobs in the first place simply from the fact that hey had too much data already to deal with.

Surprisingly though, intelligence agency programs that do appear to work to a certain degree apparently have always dropped the ball at the most critical moments. Why is that? Intelligence analysts would have been all to aware of the potential dangers of the people they were tracking so why suddenly stop tracking such people or ignore the ongoing warning signs that such tracking was providing?

Simply put, someone somewhere had to make a decision to do so putting everyone possibly affected at risk. Now it is possible that the people making these decisions attempted to make honest ones but why were such poor decisions made in such a consistent manner?

Is it possible that the overabundance of data that these analysts have been faced with in order to data mine accurate possibilities has provided the systems being used with so much variable data that the systems themselves cannot possibly make concrete diagnoses? Very possibly…

To give an example of a possible way to confuse such surveillance, I make a cell-phone call to a friend and state that “I hate all Jews, Muslims, and Christians.”. Several days later I make another call to another friend and state the opposite, I love all Jews, Muslims, and Christians.” . Any intelligent system would have to understand that neither statement could be true thus cancelling any indication that my cell-phone calls should be tracked thereby eliminating such rubbish data from analysis; or doing the opposite from poor programming, the system adds me to a burgeoning watch-list. In other words, no matter what decision is arrived at, useless data is now being incorporated into an intelligence system (I was dropped from being tracked or I was not), though there is no way to know if I am a threat or not.

Now consider the massive amounts of varied data being collected and intelligence applications are probably under severe strains in understanding so many different possibilities, thus yielding inaccurate possibilities leading to administrative decisions that actually make such terrorist attacks possible.

To add insult to injury, it has been well documented that the two leading US security scientists that did in fact develop software that could ply through such ambiguous data and still yield efficient results had their development efforts cancelled after proving the accuracy of their work.

What does this tell you? That someone, somewhere made a decision that would allow less accurate information to come into the hands of honest intelligence analysts. Anyone who has kept up with the disastrous policies of both Bush administration in the US and their affect on the US intelligence agencies would understand this quite readily.

In the end, at some level, whether intentional or not, governments are complicit in the deaths of their own citizens simply because they refused to adhere to standards of due diligence with the sensitive endeavors they were involved in. This isn’t rocket science preventing people from understanding
this.

You’re first two paragraphs are classic. The first an idiotic emotional bluster – not unlike someone knee-jerking “Edward Snowden is responsible for this”. All emotion, little thought. Posting such things seems to me to be the Western equivalent of the Middle Eastern tribal women on her knees keening for dramatic effect, for the men do “do something”.

Your second paragraph, the eejit de jure. You obviously knowing nothing about modern data mining and predictive modeling, and what it in fact accomplishes for law enforcement, nor do you know what “quality police investigation” is, or how it’s applicable – because police investigations are after the fact.

It’s kind of a stretch to jump from “attacks still happen” to “surveillance is not effective” isn’t it? After all, we have no way of knowing whether and many more attacks would there have been if we did away with the surveillance.

There were quite a few dozens of concrete ADVANCED warnings to the US government about 9/11.

For those in the Pentagon and their stooges elsewhere who have no qualms destroying entire countries, the loss of a few hundreds or a few thousands, even tens of thousands, will not disturb their breakfast, lunch or dinner.

“The Intercept has reviewed 10 high-profile jihadi attacks carried out in Western countries between 2013 and 2015 (see below), and in each case some or all of the perpetrators were already known to the authorities before they executed their plot. In other words, most of the terrorists involved were not ghost operatives who sprang from nowhere to commit their crimes; they were already viewed as a potential threat, yet were not subjected to sufficient scrutiny by authorities under existing counterterrorism powers.”

When you make a statement like this, you sure as hell need to include in your ‘Top Ten List’ the surveillance failure that started all of those that have come after…

Hey, hey!
Ooh!
The kingdom is ransacked
the jewels all taken back
and the chopper descends
they’re hidden in the back
with a message on a half-baked tape
with the spool going round
saying I’m back here in this place
and I could cry
and there’s smoke you could click on

What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?
‘Cause they’re working for the clampdown
They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we’re working for the clampdown
We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

The judge said five to ten, but I say double that again
I’m not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall ’cause government’s to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D’you know that you can use it?

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there’s nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get running
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down
You’re working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown

Yeah I’m working hard in Harrisburg
Working hard in Petersburg
Working for the clampdown
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong
Begging to be melted down
Gitalong, gitalong
(Work)
(Work)
(Work) And I’ve given away no secrets – ha!
(Work)
(Work)
(More work)
(More work)
(Work)
(Work)
(Work)
(Work)
Who’s barmy now?

No one should accept the explanations offered by the police and intelligence agencies that the perpetrators of the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the connected shootout at a kosher grocery simply slipped through the net.

The two brothers who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices, Cherif and Said Kouachi, had been known to French authorities for more than a decade. They had also been tracked by the United States and Britain.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve last week admitted that the two were “probably followed” prior to the shooting, but claimed that there had been no signs of an impending attack. Cherif was arrested in 2005 and convicted on charges of conspiracy to travel to Iraq to join an Islamic fundamentalist group. According to unnamed US officials, Said had travelled to Yemen in 2011 and received weapons training from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Ahmed Coulibaly, who seized control of the kosher grocery, was convicted of armed robbery and was known to have joined extreme Islamist circles in Paris. In 2009, he was arrested and charged with conspiring to free convicted subway bomber Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. Cherif Kouachi was also questioned over the case, but not prosecuted. Coulibaly was released from prison only in March 2014.

Last week’s shootings in Paris follow a recurring pattern in the “war on terror.” Virtually all of those involved in or linked to terrorist attacks in major imperialist centres—from the 9/11 attacks and Boston Marathon bombings to the London subway and Madrid train station bombings and the café siege last month in Sydney—have had unexplained and suspicious relations with the security agencies in those countries.

A Euronews article entitled “Key questions around the Charlie Hebdo killings go unanswered” asks why French security did not keep closer tabs on the perpetrators. “That may be because,” it suggests, “as often in the past, the French like to ‘turn’ terrorists to do their bidding. The Kouachis may have been candidates for such treatment, but no one in Paris is ever likely to admit that, even if it is a legitimate form of counter-espionage. Not now.”

It is simply not credible that the three men were able to hatch and carry out an elaborate plan involving automatic weapons and explosives without the passive complicity, if not active involvement, of elements of the state apparatus. Even stranger is the apparent escape of Coulibaly’s girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is also wanted for questioning over the attacks. While the details remain unclear, she supposedly evaded all detection as she fled from France to Spain, where she caught a flight to Turkey, then crossed the border into Syria.

The open and covert collaboration of intelligence and security agencies with Islamic extremist organisations has a long history, most notoriously in the massive CIA operation in the 1980s to finance, arm and train jihadists, including Osama bin Laden and the precursors of Al Qaeda, against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. The circumstances in which known Al Qaeda operatives were able to enter, train and carry out the 9/11 attacks remain completely unexplained to this day.

In pursuit of its colonialist ambitions in North Africa and the Middle East, French imperialism has been in the forefront of the US-led regime-change operations since 2011 in Libya and then Syria. Islamist militias aligned with Al Qaeda were the core of ground forces that, backed by NATO air power, ousted and butchered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and are now vying for supremacy in the ensuing chaos.

In Syria, France has been actively involved in the US-led campaign to finance, arm and train the so-called “rebels” fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the overwhelming majority of whom are affiliated with Islamist organisations. The target in the latest chapter in the “war on terror”—the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—is a creation of the proxy war in Syria.

The French operations in Libya and Syria stand in the long, criminal tradition of French imperialism in recruiting the most dubious and violent elements into the Foreign Legion to carry out its dirty work in the colonies. To what extent and why the state apparatus was responsible, either actively or passively, in last week’s shootings will certainly be covered up. There will be no serious investigation of the attacks, as that would expose only too clearly how they are being exploited to scrap democratic rights, build up the military-intelligence apparatus and prepare for new wars.

The ruling class regularly conspires, but this simple fact is inadequate; one cannot simply jump to the conclusion that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. One needs sturdy evidence. There are many people who question and criticize the official stories about 9/11, but who reject some of the more widely circulated half-baked conjecture and wild speculation — which doesn’t even have the dignity of careful, well-documented and substantiated conspiracy theory.

Oh, but there is NO END of “sturdy evidence” that elements of the government, components of the transnational deep state, engineered 9/11. NO END of evidence that, as you say, they created the Radical Muslim Bogeyman which they subsequently blamed for the “hijackings” and other events which transpired around 9/11, yet NO END of evidence that this narrative is a massive, ludicrous lie.

When you say that this staggering mountain of redundant evidence amounts to ” half-baked conjecture and wild speculation — which doesn’t even have the dignity of careful, well-documented and substantiated conspiracy theory”, you betray what you really are, troll boy.

There are many deep state trolls posing as skeptics of certain elements of the official narrative on 9/11, a ploy to establish their credentials as critics of some of these deep state components, in order to further their real objective of attempting to reinforce key elements of the deep state’s narrative. To see some of the sophisticated techniques deep state trolls are trained in, scroll down to “Gambits for Deception” here: https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

The imperial policymakers are clinking their champagne glasses in congratulations at having wasted no opportunity to implement their warmongering, repressive agenda. They wanted the Paris attacks, and their prayers have been answered.

Oz is a multicultural nation. Get the fuck over yourself you dick.http://abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/CO-59
Australia’s multicultural landscape is as diverse as ever following the release of 2011 Census of Population and Housing data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

New Census data has revealed that almost a quarter (24.6 per cent) of Australia’s population was born overseas and 43.1 per cent of people have at least one overseas-born parent.

The United Kingdom is the leading country of birth for the overseas-born population (20.8 per cent). It is followed by New Zealand (9.1 per cent), China (6.0 per cent) and India (5.6 per cent).

You can swear by Australia Famous for foul mouths, we take our Q from overseas
KEVIN RUDD has done it on national television, the Broadway musical Avenue Q won Tony awards for it, and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay can’t finish a sentence without it.

It seems swearing is everywhere, with one language expert suggesting Australians have some of the foulest mouths in the world.

The University of Queensland’s Roly Sussex, a professor of applied language studies, said that in terms of attitudes to swearing, the US and Australia were on opposite ends of the spectrum, with Britain in the middle.

He pointed to the Prime Minister’s dropping of the word “shitstorm” on national television in March as a reflection of Australian mores.

“The sort of words that Mr Rudd has been using in the media are completely unacceptable for President Barack Obama to be using,” Professor Sussex said.
“Some people even thought the Prime Minister’s use of the S-word in the media made him sound more like an everyday person.”

“That had trouble in England because of the word ‘bloody’ and it had trouble in Canada because of the word ‘hell’,” Professor Sussex said. “Neither caused the slightest trouble in Australia.”

But on why Australians swear so much, Professor Sussex was not so certain, suggesting that there was a “laid-back” quality to social behaviour in general. “We have become much less church-oriented and that’s a definite difference between us and the US.”

Some fuck had a fucking go at some fuck named foo. He was fucking wrong and he fucking well should fucking go to the fucking fridge and get a fucking can of harden the fuck up if he can’t fucking take it. For fucks sake. Make him fucking think twice about fucking telling someone else to fucking get the fuck over it, dont you fucking think.

You can call me old – fashioned, an old- fogey, prudish or whatever… but I just don’t and probably never will feel that the f-bomb and swearing make one cool or cutting edge. To me (and this is my two cents) those words are like nails scratching on the chalkboard of language.

I think you overreacted a bit… defending what you perceive to be multiculturalism is just fine, but you don’t have to swear and all to do that. You have a lot going for you, but you are going to turn a lot of folks off if you keep going off like that. Look at what you just wrote to me — and I have usually been supportive at what you post!

Now I can be curmudgeonly at times, and can disagree with folks. But I do strive to always be civil. I think that it is important to treat each other with some sort of civility and use our language carefully. I feel we definitely need to EVEVATE our discussions here and out in the rest of the world.

He said culturally western, not white. Most western countries have a good bit of cultural diversity. geographically the article miss spoke, but I would agree Australia is culturally closer to the US or Europe, rather than most of the other Asian-pacific countries.

Please point me to the West or the East pole.
There is no such geographical location.
When you try and draw a globe on a flat surface people tend to centre it over their own country. In fact in Australia they often draw it “upside down” claiming that the planet doesn’t have a label saying “this way up”.

As one twenty-four-year-old who joined Jabhat an-Nusra in Syria told us:

They [Western society] teach us to work hard to buy a nice car and nice clothes but that isn’t happiness. I was a third-class human because I wasn’t integrated into a corrupted system. But I didn’t want to be a street gangster. So, I and my friends simply decided to go around and invite people to join Islam. The other Muslim groups in the city just talk. They think a true Muslim state will just rain from heaven on them without fighting and striving hard on the path of Allah.

Because many foreign volunteers are marginal in their host countries, a pervasive belief among Western governments and NGOs is that offering would-be enlistees jobs or spouses or access to education could reduce violence and counter the Caliphate’s pull. But a still unpublished report by the World Bank shows no reliable relationship between increasing employment and reducing violence, suggesting that people with such opportunities are just as likely to be susceptible to jihadism. When I asked one World Bank representative why this was not published, he responded, “Our clients [that is, governments] wouldn’t like it because they’ve got too much invested in the idea.”

As William Edwards Deming famously demonstrated, no system can understand itself, and why it does what it does, including the American social system. Not knowing shit about why your society does what it makes for a pretty nasty case of existential unease. So we create institutions whose function is to pretend to know, which makes everyone feel better. Unfortunately, it also makes the savviest among us — those elites who run the institutions — very rich, or safe from the vicissitudes that buffet the rest of us.

Directly or indirectly, they understand that the real function of American social institutions is to justify, rationalize and hide the true purpose of cultural behavior from the lumpenproletariat, and to shape that behavior to the benefit of the institution’s members. “Hey, they’re a lump. Whaddya expect us to do?”

…politics and money are never going to fill what is essentially a public vacuum that is moral, philosophical and spiritual. (The latter was instantly recognized by fundamentalist Christians, disfigured by cultural ignorance, as they may be.) Not many ordinary Americans talk about this vacuum. The required spiritual and philosophical language has been successfully purged by newspeak, popular culture, a human regimentation process masquerading as a national educational system, and the ruthlessness of everyday competition, which leaves no time to contemplate anything.

Still, the void, the meaninglessness of ordinary work and the emptiness of daily life scares thinking citizens shitless, with its many unspeakables, spy cams, security state pronouncements, citizens being economically disappeared, and general back-of-the-mind unease. Capitalism’s faceless machinery has colonized our very souls. If the political was not personal to begin with, it’s personal now.

It’s 2015. So far, we’ve tallied nearly 300 mass shootings in America. Almost one for every day of the year. Where’s our Facebook flag?

For the most part, in a way that is difficult to explain except as the result of the McCarthy-era “cleansing” that served to align economics and political science with the prerogatives of American capitalist democracy, the social sciences generally and rational choice theory specifically have not drawn the focus of postmodern critique. As McClennen suggests, belief in instrumental rationality embedded in market practices utilizing resources to meet human needs and desires has become an entrenched principle of social life. Instrumental rationality, modified by game theory and expected utility theory to analyze how other individuals’ actions can be incorporated as means into the strategic and uncertain pursuit of ends, has gained worldwide practical and theoretical assent.

The market is… the final step in a process that first leaches out the moral content of a culture and then erodes the autonomy of its citizens by shaping their personal preferences. – Kenneth Binmore

Capitalist “Rational Choice” is a normative enterprise, ‘a belief system’, masquerading as positive inquiry. And as all enlightened minds are keenly aware, any false or partially false premise extended with accurate logic will generate an approximate simulation of insanity. Clash of Civilization? No. We’re hollowing out civilization. And every perturbation drawn by the vacuum is pitched as a whirlwind.

Just a thought. Your post had some good stuff in it, but it was long, and I thought sort of disjointed so I couldn’t make out exactly your main point. Maybe it could have been segmented? Again, just a thought.

My reactions, nonetheless:

1) No link between jobs/educational access and susceptibility to jihadism? Really? My reaction is that such things help fight poverty and crime and would be likely to help in this regard, at least to some degree. Is what is going on a function of continuing Islamophobia? Certainly little slights that continually occur can add up to alienate a person.

2) You quoted: “Directly or indirectly, they understand that the real function of American social institutions is to justify, rationalize and hide the true purpose of cultural behavior from the lumpenproletariat, and to shape that behavior to the benefit of the institution’s members. ” I think that’s becoming increasingly clear to anyone who is even slightly aware. Look at the propaganda, the dumbing down of our entertainment, the numbing of us to violence in so many ways.

3) You also quoted: “The required spiritual and philosophical language has been successfully purged by newspeak, popular culture, a human regimentation process masquerading as a national educational system, and the ruthlessness of everyday competition, which leaves no time to contemplate anything. ” Oh, yes, for the most part I very much agree with this. Folks are so anesthetized they don’t THINK. And yes, I don’t know about ruthless competition, but absolutely many, many folks are so preoccupied with just making a living and taking care of their families that they’re just too tired for any contemplation. Add to that, most don’t practice or get to critical thinking or ANY kind of abstract thought. As for the educational system, as a retired educator I recognize our system has problems, but I wouldn’t lay a majority of the blame here… regimentation? Well, at the college level, it was a challenge just to get students to hand in assignments and do homework. Really! A lot of teachers I knew from public schools also had lots of challenges. Things such as an overregimented curriculum that semed to emphasize entertainment and testing over real thought. And there are some stories they tell! One middle school teacher CAUGHT a student plagiarizing, and the parents totally refused to believe it and SHE got called in for a conference because of this. And a high school teacher told me that the parents of one student had her GRADE CHANGED after he gave her the poor grade she’d earned. Anyway, there needs to be a lot done in society as a whole to upgrade our educational system (my two cents :-)

4) Not sure I’m with all that market jargon, but I agree we’re rapidly being commodified and our attention sapped by commercials.

Oh my, I hope I haven’t ignored my own advice and rambled on too long.

Oh my, I hope I haven’t ignored my own advice and rambled on too long.

You could never do that feline16.
Think about twitter and how it limits thinking to 140 characters. Insidious that. It is as if they want people to think in short sharp bursts without reflection or comprehension of subtlety, Rote written to the psyche.
Why does the Intercept track twitter use?

I enjoyed the bit about Twitter may I also add texting? One can only wonder when instead of using the spoken words, laugh out loud, it will be just a blurted LOL, which I find an over used useless abbreviation. OMG!!!!

Just a thought. Your post had some good stuff in it, but it was long, and I thought sort of disjointed so I couldn’t make out exactly your main point. Maybe it could have been segmented? Again, just a thought.

Appreciate it! fwiw, I’m pro disjointed. And I don’t necessarily have an overarching point to the crap I post. :) It’s more for my own benefit in that regard. I’m trying to figure shit out. If it provokes something, that’s good. If it’s nonsense, cest la vie.

1) No link between jobs/educational access and susceptibility to jihadism? Really? My reaction is that such things help fight poverty and crime and would be likely to help in this regard, at least to some degree. Is what is going on a function of continuing Islamophobia? Certainly little slights that continually occur can add up to alienate a person.

Yeah it’s pretty unintuitive at first blush, but that’s what the evidence suggests. There’s too many affluent backgrounds for the poverty narrative to make sense. At least operationally. And the religious narrative has it’s problems as well. Genuinely observant religious backgrounds actually ameliorate violence. A lot of these saudi trained “wahhabi’s” are basically nominally religious. So something else is going on. recommend searching Doug Saunders extensive work on this, it’s really enlightening. “What Turns Some Western Muslims Into Terrorists? The Causes of Extremism”

As for the educational system, as a retired educator I recognize our system has problems, but I wouldn’t lay a majority of the blame here… regimentation?

That’s the late great Joe Bageant. I’m a bit more ecumenical about the nature of liberal institutions, educational or otherwise, than he was,(not much but a little), so I understand your pushback. But that dude “saw and learned” more about this life than a lot of us ever will. So I take it in for what it is. An extremely challenging perspective.

4) Not sure I’m with all that market jargon, but I agree we’re rapidly being commodified and our attention sapped by commercials.

Point being, market jargon is actually religious jargon. “Global Jihad”. It exists, but we’re misapprehending its source. And projecting it onto others.

Oh my, I hope I haven’t ignored my own advice and rambled on too long.

So you’re trying to figure stuff out? Just like the rest of us! I’ll just give a couple of quick notes back:

Haven’t been to Marcy Wheeler’s site in some time. Doug Sanders’ stuff does sound interesting. It’s hard just trying to keep up with TI, The Guardian, etc, my own writing. As for Joe Bageant; there might be some elements of ‘indoctrination’ in our educational system, but I still maintain the problems are much more systemic. I don’t feel our society values nor supports education nearly as well as it should (of course that’s my opinion). And as far as “market jargon” ? Yeah, I think you’re talking about the cult of money. And I’m not sure I’d agree with the fictional Gordon Gecko that “Greed is Good.”

And if you wanted to provoke a few gray cells into contemplation, mission accomplished :-)

As for Joe Bageant; there might be some elements of ‘indoctrination’ in our educational system, but I still maintain the problems are much more systemic. I don’t feel our society values nor supports education nearly as well as it should (of course that’s my opinion).

Oh I think you’re absolutely right about that. I think I gave you the wrong impression. I think teachers across the country are fighting the good fight and need all the support they can get. And btw, thank you for your service as an educator. I mean that. I think Mr. Bageant was coming from a systemic perspective as well. But again, maybe a little more jaded than most. These days, it’s the neoliberal model that ignores poverty, “teaches to the test”, colonizes minority communities, busts unions, and the generalized attack on arts, humanities and critical thinking that I’d qualify as “indoctrination”. It’s not good.

I didn’t think you were down on teachers — but it’s great to know you think we can use all the help we can get ( ’tis true!) When I read this: “it’s the neoliberal model that ignores poverty, “teaches to the test”, colonizes minority communities, busts unions, and the generalized attack on arts, humanities and critical thinking that I’d qualify as “indoctrination”. It’s not good.” — I notice I don’t think we’re that far apart at all. And it’s absolutely great that educators are pushing back. And there are moements around to alleviate some of the onerous testing… and states are even abandoning the common core (good or bad, but it’s good they’re scrutinizing it, finally).

One aside, the last contract our faculty negotiated before I retired contained a clause that was really against the interests of the faculty (at least I and quite a few others thought so). I suspect that it was modeled from something that right wing ALEC put out. Anyway, there were some members who insisted we vote “right now!” ; not even table it until we could get further opinion on it. One member who would have NEVER voted for it was absent that day from the meeting and one of those calling for a rush to vote insulted another member who then walked out (she was probably going to vote against it. Bottom line; the contract passed by 2 votes. I just shook my head. We were supposed to be some of the most intelligent and educated folks in our county and we voted for something against our own best interests. Unbelievable.

The article shows that indeed many of those carrying out terrorist attacks were known to authorities. Unstated is the question as to whether enhanced surveillance of those considered to be threats might have enabled authorities to preempt their actions. I think it to be impossible to prevent all terrorist attacks, but certainly a better job could be done. The question is, how?

First and foremost, the intelligence [sic] community needs to change its attitude about surveillance. The fact that outfits like the NSA can intercept all electronic communications does not mean that they should, even if granted the authority to do so. As I’ve been saying since the very first Snowden revelations, their paradigm is, to find a needle in a haystack, first build a larger haystack. In fact, it should be just the opposite: focus more narrowly on known threats, track their every movement. That in itself should lead to some actual foiled terrorist plots. Of course, the trick is to not focus so narrowly as to be myopic.

Another area for improvement requires an even greater conceptual effort, and that is to become more humble, both about their own abilities and about the ability of technology to aid in doing their jobs. Big data is a popular buzzword these days, and nothing epitomizes the dangers of misapplication of technology than the IC’s approach to big data. They would have you believe that the automated tools they use, whether machine learning, neural networks, cluster analysis or what have you, provide great insights, but that is just plain false. Mathematically ignorant people are prone to accept the output of such algorithms without question, making the mistake of equating correlation with causation. This results in false positives as well as failures to detect. Although these tools can be extremely useful, they require hands on analysis by open minded, even skeptical analysts, if they are to realize their potential. And I think we can all agree, the people doing these analyses are anything but open minded.

I am not too sure what this article proves. Most of the terrorists, if not all, would be known to the various arms of law, but you can’t arrest them and put them in jail just because many Muslims have the propensity towards unnecessary terror and killing innocent people. We can do enhanced interrogations to find out it anyone of them is capable of doing what we have seen in videos, but that still doesn’t justify locking them up till they have actually committed their despicable acts. Nor is it possible to tag them 24×7 and catch them just as they are about to enjoy themselves terrorizing people. So retribution and justice delivery will perforce be after the fact. Otherwise, your friend Sheikh Murtaza will write a long article how all innocent Muslims are being persecuted for their faith.

Yeah….people throw around words yet have no idea what it means…as can be seen here in this article. Like the word terrorism…if used by its dictionary meaning…the USA military would be considered the largest terrorist organization. This is what the media love to do…they redefine the meaning of words and then label groups of people…its a form of racism. using the term jihadi…i guess it is suppose to conjurer up some sort of mental image of a certain type of people implanted by mass media, that then limits our mind to what they want us to believe. It’s very subtle racism.

The USA military _are_ the largest terrorist organization. And they are considered as such by rather a lot of people.
And I hardly find the rampant racism of the corporate media “subtle”. “Blatant” and “staggering” are more the words that spring to mind.
I’ve never been a fan of mincing words. Call a spade a spade.

what the hell is a jihadi attack…it seems you focus on brown people killing white people…not the other way around…i guess it’s a big deal when white people die…what about the attack against the Sikh temple in Wisconsin or the 2011 Norway attacks, or Charleston church shooting? Were those people known to authorities? Don’t those qualify as ‘jihadi’ attacks? They seem just as deadly and also driven by hate.

An excellent point, and an illustration of why I think it was a mistake from the very beginning to declare war on terrorism. Whether it is someone murdering a bank teller in the conduct of a robbery, or someone attacking a journalist or lynching someone on account of their race, religion or nationality, it is murder. Al Qaeda, ISIS and the like are criminal organizations, no different in principle from the Mafia, and we should use law enforcement methods as opposed to military action to combat them.

Had we taken that approach in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks, there would have been no invasion of Iraq, no invasion of Afghanistan, and no ISIS. By our grossly inappropriate action the US government and military have done nothing but to take hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, expend needless trillions of dollars, and, at the same time, increase the risk that we face. Quite an accomplishment, and remarkably, supported by the majority of the US electorate.

The Intercept has reviewed 10 high-profile jihadi attacks carried out in Western countries between 2013 and 2015

As I’ve stated here frequently, the constant use of the word jihadi solely within the context of violence committed by some who claim to be Muslims takes away the spiritual significance of Jihad that has been given by traditional Islam over the years.

Here’s the link to an article by an eminent scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, I’ve often posted:

To me, as a Sufi Muslim, a true jihadi is someone who is striving to control his or her lower self, which, by definition, reflects qualities, such as lack of peace, vengeance, arrogance, selfishness, self-pride, ignorance, hatred, seeing otherness, desire for power and control, etc.

The brutal history of Islam tends to make me think otherwise, but it is true that people have reformed other traditions in similar manner. Even the word has analogues – for instance, when India launched the INS Arihant, first of the Arihant class, it was taken as a hostile gesture for them to name it “Slayer of Enemies”. But apparently their tradition is also that Arihants can be spiritual warriors combating their internal contamination … which I suppose is a most apt name indeed for a newfangled boat where people share a small enclosed space with a nuclear reactor. :)

Excellent points. I’d like to see this re-posted everywhere. Other than failures to monitor/keep in custody known extremists, I don’t see much mention of why the security at a major concert venue seemed non-existent. Even movie theaters in the U.S. have police at exits now. The security at the stadium stopped the one suicide bomber from entering. I haven’t seen any information on this in regard to the Bataclan.

The author of this little piece of paranoia doesn’t understand how to use Wikipedia. They’ve miscalculated times, as Wikipedia times are given in UTC, not CET. And the early version of the article they discuss as the work of a single user, “not your average Wikipedia editor”, is the work of numerous editors, as you can see if you look back at the article history (which is all available, not deleted; it probably just shifted to the next page of the article’s history listings). The first revision of the article, by User:Gareth E Kegg, is the single sentence: “A shooting that injured several people and a bomb attack on a bar near the stad de france in Paris injured several people in November 13 2015.” No mystery.

In the summer of 2013, officials celebrated what one classified document prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center refers to as “a milestone”—boosting the number of people in the TIDE database to a total of one million, up from half a million four years earlier.

The no-fly list was a good idea in its day, but terrorists have evolved. In retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake to assume that terrorists were purely fixated on planes. The latest attacks in Paris targeted restaurants, a concert hall and a sports stadium.

Should the US create a no-restaurant watch list and set up TSA checkpoints at every restaurant? This would present some logistical problems and the checkpoints themselves could become targets. A better solution is to simply relocate everyone on the watch list to a detention center – perhaps located on a sunny Caribbean island. This would work for the US, which had the foresight to impose some one sided agreements that involved a perpetual lease on a suitable piece of real estate. It would also work for France, which has had the foresight to retain a number of its island colonies. But unfortunately there’s no guarantee the list will not continue to grow. Once it swells to several million, that’s a lot of people to detain, even using the world’s most advanced for profit prison system.

As usual, I think technology will come to the rescue. Why not simply connect the database to an app using facial recognition. People could then easily check if the person approaching on the street was a terrorist, and if yes, pull out a gun and shoot them. The rest of the world may not be ready for this made in America solution, but I think this is why the framers of the Constitution, in their wisdom, created the Second Amendment.

As usual, Duce, you are full of wonderful ideas. Might I modestly suggest that the terrorist problem can be dealt with, as you suggest, within the context of the Second Amendment, but with the additional proviso that the rules of engagement now employed by the police and military of the US be extended to all citizens. Might I add, speaking as a technologist, that technology is not a panacea, and can lead to misuse. For that reason, I propose we forego all this facial recognition and database stuff, with their inherent expense and uncertain reliability, and just let everyone decide for themselves who to shoot. There would be no need to prosecute, or indeed even to investigate, such shootings, based on the precedent established by George W. Bush and his neocons, (along with the neolibs, may I add) that if you wish or pray hard enough for something to be true, it will become true.

It is not possible to prevent determined people from hurting others. Even the most invasive surveillance and the most abusive pre-emptive targeting of suspected “radicals” will not keep us safe.
Surveillance has its place, and in many of the examples cited in this article, these people should have been closely watched. Presumably the reason why they weren’t is that there are _just_so_many_ people now that Western nations are alienating, and we don’t have the manpower to keep tabs on them all. The current spook policy of surveilling everyone and alienating everyone simply results in unmanageable mountains of work, and it loses the trust and cooperation of communities, who are best placed to raise early warnings.

If Western leaders are serious about preventing terrorism, they will stop provoking and validating it with their appalling humanitarian crimes in the Middle East; they will stop glorifying it with incendiary rhetoric and cinematic explosions; they will stop adding to the ranks of the resentful and indignant by alienating 28% of the World’s population. And they will stop squandering their resources on “collect-it-all, exploit-it-all”, so that proper, old-fashioned police-work can have some chance of being effective.

This is what I don’t get about the judicial system in Canada and around the world. Watching the news recently, all I hear is “so and so who was known to authorities..” or “they just released individuals involved in extremist activities..” etc., etc. How do we keep a closer eye on these people? Or why aren’t there justifiable grounds to keep constant surveillance on them. I know this is an extremely large request considering the amount of people who they’ve recently identified in extremist activities. That also brings up the concern of individual freedom and the right to privacy. How deep are we willing to let authorities go to have the information they require? How deep do they need to go?

You make a superb case here for something many of us have been saying for ages. It would be one thing if massive surveillance worked (though I would still be opposed to the NSA on ethical grounds) but that we have the most massive collection of data in human history, that it keeps “catching” the names of those about to unleash terror, and that knowing that doesn’t stop that terrorism, but we continue to insist on running the same play, is the surest sign that we’ve tipped over into insanity.

Much as the FBI warned the White House in plain, direct language of the impending 9/11 disaster, Turkey reached out to Paris with express warnings about the very men involved in the attack.

The evidence seems clear.We would do better to listen to feet on the ground, old-fashioned, detective work, and then use our judicial system to handle the culprits than to re-enact the same debacle repeatedly.

not only was the #7 ottawa shooter known to autorities but his identity was known and announced by US agencies before the smoke even cleared. same for the recent attacks; several warnings came from other countries in the days and weeks before but were either ignored or misinterpreted.

Which is absolutely true. In lieu of a pre-crime society. Even then. Tactics adjust, attacks continue to happen. Society warps. The ratchet tightens, and tightens, and tightens.

As Corey Robin repeatedly notes, very few people, on a wide range of political spectra, are willing to confront “security” as a wholly political value. Or for that matter, its antimony, “freedom”. We reflexively adopt its pretense as universal, neutral, absolute. And for that, we’ve completely lost the plot.

As I’ve written before, of all the ideological Molochs that modernity has spawned—communism, fascism, liberalism, conservatism, whatever—none is as potent and enduring, none demands so much sacrifice, as the idea of security. If we’re going to get past the permanent state of emergency we seem to be in, we have to accept that 100% security is not possible. Risk is part of life. While the siren call of safety has an irresistible lure—though we should always remember that not everyone’s safety has the same lure to policymakers; security is a selective ideal, selectively implemented—we need to learn how to resist it. By which I mean we need to learn how to think politically about security, not simply give into its irrepressible demands, but meditate upon how, like all goods, it should be distributed; how much of it we need; who should pay for it, and so on.

National security is as political as Social Security; let’s think and act accordingly.

If we were thinking and acting according, we might recognize “Wahhabi Terror” as an investment. It’s part of the recycling process. “Recycling petro dollars”. Terrorism quite literally underwrites our buying power, as westerners. OilWeaponsTerrorPretextViolenceOilWeaponsTerrorPretextViolence

When we say it’s a “Forever War”, what we’re really saying is it’s the “End of History”. The system has no where else to go.

…we are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can’t hold up anymore, a system that to survive must make war, as the great empires have always done. But as a Third World War can’t be done, they make zonal wars. What does this mean? That they produce and sell weapons, and with this the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously they are sorted. This unique thought takes away the wealth of diversity of thought and therefore the wealth of a dialogue between peoples. Well understood globalization is a wealth. Poorly understood globalization is that which nullifies differences. It is like a sphere in which all points are equidistant from the center. A globalization that enriches is like a polyhedron, all united but each preserving its particularity, its wealth, its identity, and this isn’t given. And this does not happen.http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-interview-with-la-vanguardia—full-text-45430/

The Pope could tell the truth to a Spanish language paper. But in front of Congress, he prevaricated about independent weapons dealers, as opposed to the functions of empire. He couldn’t, as Robin says, “meditate upon how, like all goods, (security) should be distributed; how much of it we need; who should pay for it, and so on..”

Because that would be a discussion about stakes, in a world that believes, has to believe, they don’t exist.

If someone is simply praying a lot, there’s nothing we can do. But the question is, WHY in four different cases listed above did a country make a special effort to prohibit people from travelling to Syria? I mean, how many people total are stopped from travelling to Syria because it’s a terror plot? What percentage of them go on to kill people? What’s the kill count per person stopped. Is there ANY explanation for us to do that, except that the spy agencies want to preserve terrorists as a scarce resource that earns them their paychecks?

I say let them go to Syria, try your best to prove they’ve joined armed forces there, and use that as a reason to revoke their citizenship (with a proper, due-process proceeding). Let them stay in Syria and play all the war games they want — let them reduce their own numbers bickering over power or starting schisms or getting caught trying to sneak away from fighting.

Strangely, countries have long had mechanisms for dealing with people who want to leave to take up arms against them. I say strangely, because the mechanisms have not been applied to people who want to go and join ISIS, for instance. I completely agree with you: let them go, and good riddance. But as they are about to depart, explain clearly to them that in joining their new cause they are relinquishing their citizenship, and they may only return upon being granted a visa. When they leave, cancel their passports. If they then return, arrest them and charge them with treason. Let the courts then decide, via trial by jury, whether or not they are innocent or guilty. Pretty simple, and within existing, tried legal structures.

I want to agree with you, but the part about “explaining as they go” is tricky. Because these are people going to Turkey or Jordan or someplace, who will say they have business. Demanding that they surrender citizenship on leaving is an intolerable exit restriction if they are innocent – and how do you find them anything but innocent if they have not been charged with a crime? Even if they go to Syria, there’s always a chance they take one look at the heads on pikes and nuts driving around harassing women and decide it’s not for them, and even that isn’t really a crime. It’s only when they literally join another country’s army that the traditional red line is crossed.

“A top FBI expert on the al-Qaeda terrorist network testified in court today that the agency knew before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden, had sent followers to an Oklahoma flight school to train as pilots and was interested in hijacking airplanes.”

Um, no one is arguing that Snowden had caused surveillance powers to be stifled in 2001 when Ed was in high school. But they are arguing that now, especially in light of the Paris attacks. So The Intercept went back two years. Fourteen years ago they didn’t even have all the same capabilities, nor were Islamists particularly using online communications, many of which did not yet exist.

So they don’t try to apprehend people whom they have good reason to believe are terrorists, they spend most of their time conducting sting operations against young Muslim men who are mentally ill. What is going on here?

they spend most of their time conducting sting operations against young Muslim men who are mentally ill.

That is what I thought about as I read one after another after another of people ‘on the radar’ for actually questionable and suspicious activity which could have lead to not only keeping closer tabs on their activity but even — perhaps, not sure if this would be a good idea or not — setting up a sting or at least some semi stings on these real suspects rather than the fake ones that the FBI and etc have set up and celebrated taking down. Seems they like to have the sure thing, and the sure thing only. They like to control their own plots and scripts. Pay their own sleazy informants to set up and catch mentally challenged individuals. They do all of that to justify and grow their multi-billion dollar budget year after year. The multiple money trails all have a lot to do with why they keep failing upward decade after decade, costing the lives of many innocent people because of their failures, and because they don’t even make the effort due to choosing instead to seek easy fake stings for easy money for their coffers.

While monitoring the main steam media I’ve noticed a constant barrage of feds and civilian Intelligence people screaming about a need to expand capabilities here in the US. Especially bad is the constant attacks on encryption apps and software. ” We can’t spy on you” because of encryption, or court orders take too long. Most of the attackers, as pointed out, are known to authorities, so why is more spying going to make things better? Times are tough made worse by governments that use force whenever they want to exploit a situation or resource. (oil) I believe that we all would be better served if diplomatic rather than force were used to resolve the middle east crisis. Or as I’ve said for years, violence brings more violence.

Be careful what you wish for. By making the case that authorities knew about these radicalized people but “did nothing”, you raise the question of why nothing was done. The next argument you will hear is that authorities need to be able to detain these radicals before they commit an act of terrorism. You’re really walking the line toward “pre-crime” thinking. If that happens, you’ll end up longing for the day that all the government asked for was massive surveillance authority.

[snip]
While Monis had a warrant out for his arrest in Iran, he sought political asylum in Australia in 1996,[6] which was granted in 2001.[7] Monis variously promoted himself as an Iranian intelligence official, a political activist, a spiritual healer and expert in black magic, an outlaw bikie and a Muslim cleric.[8] He told a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with schizophrenia that he had to change his name for “security reasons,” variously calling himself “Michael Hayson Mavros”,[9] “Sheikh Haron”,[10] and “Ayatollah Mohammed Manteghi Boroujerdi”.[8][11]

Monis ran a “spiritual healing” business, telling some women that they needed to submit to sexual molestation to receive treatment. In 2014, Monis was charged with accessory to murder of his ex-wife, as well as over 40 counts of sexual assault.[12][13] At the time of his death he had recently converted from Shia Islam to Sunni Islam, and attended Islamist rallies promoting conspiracy theories about Australian security agencies.[13][14] While on bail, and facing a likely lengthy imprisonment,[12] he declared allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.[15]
[snip],

Security agencies received more than a dozen warnings about Man Haron Monis’s Facebook posts – including a pledge of allegiance to “the caliph of the Muslims” – in the days before the Sydney siege, but decided they “did not indicate a desire or attempt to engage in terrorism”, an inquest has heard.

Contact between the Martin Place gunman and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) is the subject of the third phase of the New South Wales coroner’s inquest into the December 2014 siege, which started on Wednesday.
[snip]

No. I think it is right to oppose the unnecessary levels of surveillance that are proposed. But when we take these agencies to task for not doing something with the information, we create pressure that, were I in their shoes, would compel me to say, “You must give us the authority to act on the information we have. We can’t keep going through all this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo that’s in the Constitution. We have to be allowed to go grab anyone we have suspicions about.” Or something along those things.

I guess what I’m saying is that if we criticize the policy because it doesn’t work, it’s pretty easy to claim that it will work if given even more power. I think the claim that shuts down that kind of counter-argument is to say, “Don’t do this because it is wrong. It infringes on our rights.” Of course, we could say both of those things.

In any case, not trying to pick on the article, just pointing out that it leaves another avenue open for arguing for more and more powers to stop the attacks.

Another great piece of journalism. The men and women at the Intercept investigating and writing all these articles since the Paris attacks are doing great work. Keep it up. Eventually, hopefully, the people of America and Europe will wake up and start asking some of the right questions of their leaders and governments.